IT innovation takes flight at Embry-Riddle

“How do we change IT from being a Department of No?”

Four years ago, that was the question Becky Vasquez faced when she assumed the CIO role at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Worldwide. IT at Embry-Riddle, like a lot of traditional enterprise IT departments, had somewhat of a negative reputation among its customers around the university when Vasquez arrived. She resolved to make IT a respected, valued, full-fledged partner working with faculty and administrators on transformative technology projects. This took planned, persistent effort.

Restructuring for visibility

When she arrived, Vasquez had two direct reports responsible for managing a majority of the university’s IT team. But the structure wasn’t working. “I was losing visibility into the IT organization, and I wasn’t able to reach up and down quickly and pivot,” she says. So, IT was restructured into six key areas: customer engagement and support; applications and productivity; networks; servers and cloud administration; cybersecurity; and the office of the CIO, which includes Vasquez, the architecture team, the project management office, and administrative operations, each of which is headed by an executive director who reports directly to Vasquez.

Since the restructuring, communication up and down the IT ranks has increased and become more efficient, Vasquez says. Still, she knows that whenever you have any kind of divisions, you can potentially create silos, which work against the goal of tighter integration with the business.

To this end, Vasquez is embedding IT staffers in various business units as a means of creating partnerships between technology professionals and the business functions they enable. The goal is for these embedded IT professionals to bring forth solutions based on firsthand knowledge of the business’ operations and needs. “This is how business-IT partnerships can happen,” she says.

Becoming a transformative partner

Today, IT is involved in projects from the very outset, working collaboratively with university personnel in designing project requirements and weighing risks and rewards. “Having IT be part of the process up front has made all the difference in the evolution of the IT department,” says Vasquez. “Now, we have the opportunity as technology leaders to be transformative partners for the business.”

A recent example of this partnership is the university’s virtual crash investigation and aerial robotics labs, which provide an interactive environment for simulated aircraft accident investigation, drone design and build, and test-flight capabilities. Embry-Riddle’s Worldwide Campus has 150 classroom locations around the world and extensive online learning for more than 26,000 students. Historically, similar lab spaces have been limited to traditional university settings and a physical space. However, the new virtual lab, built on a gaming engine, provides an opportunity to offer lab space online, eliminating physical restrictions. The virtual labs, which are not available commercially, are the first of their kind for aviation aerospace education. “They simply aren’t available elsewhere,” Vasquez notes.

The idea of the virtual lab was brought forth and championed by faculty who are experts in their respective fields. But once IT started the request-for-proposal process, Vasquez says the team realized this type of environment did not exist. Instead of waiting for a commercial product, IT worked closely with the College of Aviation and a development partner to build the lab.

As Vasquez’s experience shows, innovation is simply too critical to be left to happenstance and serendipity. Today, the university’s IT organization isn’t just providing technology, Vasquez says. “We’re changing lives through providing education.” In today’s data-driven, customer-centric world, IT leaders need the energy, creativity, business knowledge and technical skills of IT organizations that fully understand their company’s business goals — plus how and where IT fits in.

Contributing author Julia King provided support for this article.